@inproceedings{b415824b6eae438a8b17fc63ead280b1,
title = "Towards Correlating Search on Google and Asking on Stack Overflow",
abstract = "Search engines and Question and Answer (Q&A) sites are the two commonly used ways for developers to seek information on the web. In this paper, we ask whether the questions developers ask on Q&A sites correlate with the information developers search for using search engines. We report on our empirical study to investigate the correlations of the 185 popular technical terms developers search on Google and ask on Stack Overflow using search statistics obtained from Google Trends over a 574-weeks span and question statistics derived from Stack Overflow Data Dump over a 300-weeks span. Our study shows that technical terms searched and asked have strong correlation over time. Search and asking of newer, specific technical terms have stronger correlation, compared with older, general technical terms. We have developed a web interface for accessing our dataset and empirical results available at http://comparetrend.appspot.com/. Inspired by our empirical results, we present future directions that can harness Stack Overflow as sampled data for supporting time-aware search and semantic search.",
keywords = "Google Trends, Stack Overflow, Trend correlation, tag, technology",
author = "Chunyang Chen and Zhenchang Xing",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016 IEEE.; 2016 IEEE 40th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference, COMPSAC 2016 ; Conference date: 10-06-2016 Through 14-06-2016",
year = "2016",
month = aug,
day = "24",
doi = "10.1109/COMPSAC.2016.210",
language = "English",
series = "Proceedings - International Computer Software and Applications Conference",
publisher = "IEEE Computer Society",
pages = "83--92",
editor = "William Claycomb and Dejan Milojicic and Ling Liu and Mihhail Matskin and Zhiyong Zhang and Sorel Reisman and Hiroyuki Sato and Zhiyong Zhang and Ahamed, {Sheikh Iqbal}",
booktitle = "Proceedings - 2016 IEEE 40th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference, COMPSAC 2016",
address = "United States",
}